Are you too hard on yourself about your genealogy or family history work in 2012? Do you think more about what you didn’t achieve, or that ancestor who is still hiding, or whose records seem all to have been destroyed? It’s easy to think like that, isn’t it…

I’m constantly frustrated my being unable to pin down Rebecca Harrington, a 2x great grandmother. She’s a very slippery character. Still, I won’t give up.

A very good year for geneabloggers

So I was delighted to read Geniaus‘s inspiring geneameme, Accentuate the Positive, in which she invites us to share the good news about our activities in 2012. Thank you, Jill!

13. A journal/magazine article I had published was in the new free online Irish genealogy magazine, Irish Lives Remembered. I was thrilled and honoured when Eileen asked me to write about my 3x great grandfather, Nicholas Delaney, and how my mother and I came to write A Rebel Hand, our book about him.

I’m an avid reader of the magazine, and an added bonus is that it features a lot of Australian information as well.

So you can imagine what a joy it was to write the article, and to remember the extraordinary days when we were researching our book. It was hard work, but very rewarding and exciting, too. And it started me on my genie journey.

14. I taught a friend how to find and order a birth certificate online. It wasn’t difficult, but it was useful for them, and so it was worth it for both of us.

15. A genealogy book that taught me something new was The John Simpson and Sarah Saga, compiled by Sylvia Taylor. This is the record of her research into the lives of John and his (?clandestine) wife, Sarah Marshall, and a list of their descendants, along with family stories. They’re my 3x great grandparents, both convicts, who arrived in New South Wales within days of each other in January 1818 and got together soon after. Their daughter Lucy, my ancestor, was born ten months later…

I’m grateful to my cousin, Wayne Morris, for letting me see his copy of the book. I couldn’t track down a copy anywhere, online or in real life, until then. Sometimes it’s frustrating trying to do Australian research while I’m in the UK. I can just see my Aussie genealogy pals smiling wryly – many of them may have the same problem, but in reverse.

My next step is to follow up every fact in Sylvia’s book. Not that I doubt her for a moment, and I’m very thankful for all her hard work, it’s just that if there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s check your sources. And check again.

The National Archives by Nick Cooper (via Wikipedia)

16. A great repository/archive/library I visited wasThe National Archives in London. I planned to go to more archives and libraries in 2012 and signed up for introductory tours of the London Metropolitan Archives, the Guildhall Library (where I took the chance to see a fascinating exhibition about London’s guilds) and the Society of Genealogists. They were all Aladdin’s caves, but I have to say that TNA was the most impressive – not surprisingly, given its size and reach.

I also went along to my local library’s refurbished Local Studies centre and will be going back often now it’s open again. Our libraries are under threat and need our support.

17. A new genealogy/history book I enjoyed was… (cough) I’m going to cheat bend the rules a little now. Here in the UK, there seems to be an endless fascination (obsession?) with the Tudors. And a slew of books about the period, too. I’m up for history of any era, but I’ve been feeling Tudored out recently.

But I’d been impressed (and puzzled!) by Hilary Mantel‘s Wolf Hall, her novel about Thomas Cromwell, and was looking forward to reading Bring Up the Bodies in about five years when it would be available at my library. Popular books tend to be borrowed back-to-back for a long time. So one day as I was browsing the shelves I was surprised and delighted to see it sitting there, available and grabbed it. Bring Up the Bodies isn’t a book for reading on the beach. You have to work hard, but I learned a lot of historical background (while remembering it was fiction). And, yes, I really enjoyed it.

Blue Mountains by JJ Harrison (via Wikipedia)

19. A geneadventure I enjoyed was… I had no big adventures in 2012. There were small voyages of discovery, though, like getting to know those excellent libraries I’ve mentioned. Writing the Irish Lives Remembered article was a new departure as well.

And really, family history and genealogy is all an adventure. We set out with a map which is missing huge chunks, we take wrong paths, we get lost, we get help from others, and sometimes we find what we are looking for – or even something we aren’t, but which is also worth the journey.

20. Another positive I would like to share is something you’re probably familiar with – the genealogy community online. Bloggers, tweeters, on Facebook and Google+, writers and readers, you’re wonderful. Supportive, funny, full of information. Thank you for your comments, advice, suggestions and encouragement.

If you’d like to see all the other responses to this geneameme, Jill’s listed them here. You’ll find stories of hard work, triumph, humour and above all, a record of a positive 2012.

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About rebelhand

A Rebel Hand is:
about Nicholas Delaney, Irish rebel of 1798, transported as a convict to New South Wales, roadbuilder, innkeeper and farmer. My great-great-great grandfather.
Other ancestors transported to Australia, like Sarah Marshall, John Simpson and James Thomas Richards, pop up as well.
This blog's also about the historical background to their lives, in England, Ireland, and Australia.
My respectable Welsh ancestors sometimes get a look in.

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Header image based on View of Sydney Cove from Dawes Point by Joseph Lycett. By State Library of New South Wales (cat a5491074), CC BY-SA
Full details: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:View_of_Sydney_Cove_from_Dawes_Point_by_Joseph_Lycett_page74_a5491074.JPG